Action related nav

Inside The Bills

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick isn’t surprised by too much when it comes to game plans and ‘X’s and ‘O’s, but there was one thing the Bills did defensively that he wasn’t expecting.

Belichick admitted that their defense did not play well on the opening drive when the Bills went 80 yards on 10 plays to score a touchdown in relatively easy fashion. But New England’s offense got rolling in the second quarter scoring on three straight possessions and built an 11-point halftime lead.

What caught Belichick off guard was how little Buffalo chose to blitz, choosing coverage instead of sending extra rushers.

“Defensively, they didn’t really blitz the whole first half,” said Belichick. “They ran a couple of zone pressures where one guy blitzed and the other guy dropped. They didn’t really play pressure at all in the second half, and then we saw a little more pressure defense. We kind of anticipated that at half time. We didn’t think they would keep doing the same thing for as long as they did, but they pretty much did the whole first half.”

Ryan explained that they decided to go with coverage knowing Brady gets the ball out too fast for even a blitz to get to him.

“We were going to put it on our front four,” said Ryan. “We thought we had an advantage there. Ball came out a lot of times and if you turn some people loose… regardless of the coverage. We were mixing in two-man, a bunch of different things. But shot it’s to their credit. You know I’ve been on the wrong end of it a few times when the kid gets hot and Brady was hot and if you make a mistake on top of it he kills you.”

Brady threw for 466 yards in the game, the most by any opposing QB in Bills history.